Record sleeves?

I went to the sleevetown.com site yesterday looking for "rice paper" sleeves (which are, as Lugnut stated earlier, actually polyethylene). They don't list any such sleeves anymore. I sent them an e-mail asking about this. I got a reply saying that Discwasher, the manufacturer, went out of business and that "there is not a rice paper sleeve on the market any longer." Really????

Should you ever have a fire or excessive heat anywhere near your vinyl treasures, the poly sleeves can melt right into the vinyl. HP lost a lot of Absolute Sound recommended records during a house fire. Nothing is better for your records than good rice paper sleeves. If you love your records as much as I do (fifty years worth), you would not think of using anything else.

dobjim

Yes, Dobjim, but as I posted, the storyI got from Sleeve City is that there are NO rice paper sleeves on the market anymore.

I want to bring up a point not yet discussed in this thread. The term rice paper is a misnomer, as there is no paper actually made from rice. The term generally refers to fine Japanese papers, often the acid free variety which are excellent for storage of fine photographs and (of course) LP’s.

Even ‘true” rice paper is but a misnomer for paper made from the pith of a small tree found in the Far East. It is often, erroneously, called India Paper.

The important thing here, whether for photographs or rare LP’s, is to store them against material that it will not react with. This could be any fine quality acid free sleeve or even the modern plastic lined and paper reinforced sleeves already discussed here.

I‘ve used the plastic and paper combo without any problems, and I have a good many LPs stored this way.

One historical and true issue with plastic sleeves, responsible for the hatred of all non paper storage is the old factory packing for Columbia Six Eye records.
This antique plastic formulation did stick and mark a fair number of LP‘s, with results varying from no harm to severe degradation of the sound. If you have any old Six Eye LP’s in their original sleeves, it should be ditched in favor of either acid free paper or modern plastic.

Beyond that, I feel that careful cleaning and storage in a modern, high quality sleeve is all that is necessary for long term protection of our valuable vinyl collection.

Albert... Lugnut also pointed out that "rice paper" sleeves are not really rice paper. What Sleeve City used to sell are these same paper/poly sleeves that I'm looking for and that you and Lugnut refer to. My question, still unanswered, is: is it true, as Sleeve City tells me, that these paper/poly sleeves really are no longer available?